INSIDE TECHNOLOGY.

New pager may make conversations more public

December 17, 2001|By JON VAN.

People who are offended by louts sharing cell phone conversations in restaurants, buses and other public places should be warned that things may be about to worsen.

Unavoidable eavesdropping on one-sided conversations may be bad, but soon we'll be treated to hearing all sides of calls that may involve several participants. That realization dawned upon me recently while trying out the new V200 personal communicator from Motorola Inc. that runs on the Verizon Wireless network in Chicago.

The V200 is a nifty two-way pager that enables you to use a keyboard to tap out short messages to other pagers or regular e-mail accounts. It also can grab information like ball scores and stock quotes off the Internet. All of these applications are fairly quiet and unobtrusive.

The V200 is also a full-fledged cell phone, but not the kind you hold up to your ear to use. This palm-size computer can be used with an ear bud to make private phone calls or it can be employed as a mobile speaker phone, and therein lies the future horror for people who dislike all the public jabbering that wireless technology promotes.

At a local watering hole recently a friend and I phoned a buddy in California to try out the V200's speaker-phone function. As the connection was made, the restaurant's owner stopped by to say hello and another friend spotted us and came over.

We introduced the crowd to our California chum on the phone who seemed a bit confused to have four people talking to him. Our group soon started talking to each other and to the man on the phone, gradually escalating to raucous levels. Had we been in a quiet restaurant rather than a crowded bar, the noise probably would have been quite annoying to others.

The V200, like Palms and other personal digital assistants, cannot be designed to be held to the ear like a conventional phone because that prevents the user from viewing its screen, negating the device's purpose. So it's only logical to turn these gizmos into portable speaker phones.

And V200's sound reproduction was great. Unless you're the person at the next table trying to read the menu.

Expanding presence: There are plenty of phone companies offering Chicago-area local service in competition with Ameritech, but one newcomer may raise a few eyebrows.

Verizon Communications Inc., the nation's largest local phone company, is quietly expanding its service offerings here in competition with Ameritech, owned by SBC Communications Inc., the No. 2 outfit nationally.

Verizon is already offering voice and Internet service to residents of some high-rises and it plans to begin offering services to small- and medium-size businesses in this region next year.

"We're doing this in phases," said James Hargrave, an Illinois-based Verizon executive.

"Our first move is to offer residential service in buildings that have 150 to 200 units, and small business will come next," he said.

Whether Verizon gets into neighborhoods with service to single-family houses depends upon how well it does in the early phases, Hargrave said.

The company has a large presence in Illinois, being the incumbent carrier in many Downstate communities. It also is the majority owner of Verizon Wireless, which has a big presence in the Chicago market.

Hargrave said that Verizon's growing presence here won't be trumpeted by advertising right now because it is being targeted to specific market segments rather than a mass market.

Even so, any competition from a sibling Baby Bell has to draw some attention at SBC's corporate headquarters in San Antonio.

DSL excitement: Ameritech evidently benefited from the recent difficulties experienced by AT&T Broadband when its bankrupt Internet service provider, ExciteAtHome, turned off service at the end of November.

Ameritech saw an immediate spike in orders for its high-speed Internet service supplied over copper using DSL, or digital subscriber line, technology, said Aaron Schoenherr, an Ameritech spokesman.

"So far for December, our DSL orders are running about 15 percent above where they were in November," Schoenherr said. "At least part of that must come from AT&T customers."